A series of very bloody questions (aka questions about blood hunting/magic)

[GrooveCrusader]

Recently I've been giving blood nations a more proper go after being more willing to start equipping alot more of my mages with gems more recently (a very bad habit I've built up from when I started playing 5).

Blood is absolutely fantastic to use and its a blast to be able to summon lots of really strong units early on to aid my regular armies. At the cost of somewhat hurting your economy due to the popkill caused by blood hunting. I am also aware (unless I'm mistaken) that provinces with a population above 5000 are the best spots to hunt in as it incurs a penalty to blood hunting when said population is below 5000.

However I do have some questions about it so I can be more efficient with handling it.

Firstly, I am aware that its generally best/most cost effective to have a B2 mage blood hunt (from what I understand and heard), however is having more than one to blood hunt a good idea? and I'm incorrect about the former, is having higher level blood mages via boosters to blood hunt generally better? Is it better to have a unit collect and drop off recently collected blood slaves off to a nearby lab? or just have a lab in the blood hunted province to save time?

Secondly, its a question of logistics and how to handle blood slaves and as well what spells blood mages should be casting the most often during a battle, what are very good blood spells to use throughout the game? (early, mid and then late game). There appears to be a decent amount of blood spells related to restoring stamina, my question is though what are some common scripts for blood mages with the conservative use option on? Should I just transport blood slaves via scouts to the front lines constantly like with gems?

lastly as its related to magic itself. I've had an issue where I had a mage with the correct level of air to cast storm, however he seemingly refuses to do it, this is quite annoying as it prevents my lesser mages to make use of storm power in order to cast thunder strike, my guess is that its maybe a matter of fatigue preventing the mage's ai from casting it, even though its scripted? (for a bit of context this was when I was playing MA Caelum).

Either way, game is an absolute blast, and I can't wait to get better at handling both blood, magic and better scripting mages :)

Cheers!

[SaD-82]

As for a general answer to the first part:
Yes, ferrying slaves with cheap commanders is recommended, unless you happen to have a lab in your province (and if you have money to spare I would suggest doing it in all those provinces in which you want to hunt for blood - the upfront payment of labs will save you gold in the long run when compared to upkeep for slave ferrying commanders).

And yes: Higher level bloodmages are better suited for hunting. You can do it with B1 mages, but then I would suggest to craft at least the rod to elevate their chances - in fact: The rod should be an item every bloodhunter has in its possession.

And yes: Having several bloodhunters in one province is possible and has some advantages (gold income penalty is reduced in comparison to hunt in several provinces), but:
Each subsequent blood hunter will have the unrest penalty created by the former bloodhunter when determining if they fail - the unrest will skyrocket - there's a cap to how many slaves you can acquire in each round from a province which puts a cap on total blood levels you should use when hunting. AFAIK, the limit is on 6 blood levels (3 B1's with rods, 2 B2's with rods, etc) when wanting to be efficient.

As for spells:
This depends on your nation and which units you have. And which national spells you have.
As a common thing: Blood communions are strong - in my opinion even stronger than normal communions. Which just means: If you have slaves and cheap mages - just go straight for the big spells as soon as you can.
The rest, as mentioned, depends on what nation you're playing.

[GrooveCrusader]

Originally posted by SaD-82:

As for a general answer to the first part:
Yes, ferrying slaves with cheap commanders is recommended, unless you happen to have a lab in your province (and if you have money to spare I would suggest doing it in all those provinces in which you want to hunt for blood - the upfront payment of labs will save you gold in the long run when compared to upkeep for slave ferrying commanders).

And yes: Higher level bloodmages are better suited for hunting. You can do it with B1 mages, but then I would suggest to craft at least the rod to elevate their chances - in fact: The rod should be an item every bloodhunter has in its possession.

And yes: Having several bloodhunters in one province is possible and has some advantages (gold income penalty is reduced in comparison to hunt in several provinces), but:
Each subsequent blood hunter will have the unrest penalty created by the former bloodhunter when determining if they fail - the unrest will skyrocket - there's a cap to how many slaves you can acquire in each round from a province which puts a cap on total blood levels you should use when hunting. AFAIK, the limit is on 6 blood levels (3 B1's with rods, 2 B2's with rods, etc) when wanting to be efficient.

As for spells:
This depends on your nation and which units you have. And which national spells you have.
As a common thing: Blood communions are strong - in my opinion even stronger than normal communions. Which just means: If you have slaves and cheap mages - just go straight for the big spells as soon as you can.
The rest, as mentioned, depends on what nation you're playing.

Thanks! Though I also must ask since I'm somewhat confused about it still, whats the biggest advantage with setting up communions? I think they pass all the fatique to the communion slaves, and heard that they do boost the magic skill of the master but it seems somewhat inconsistent in my experience. Is there a good rule of thumb to follow with regards to the magic skill increases from it? or am I mistaken?

[Uncle Al]

The population requirement to have no penalty is now 7500 in Dom 6.

[Kamiyama]

Blood magic is bloody complicated (pun intended) and you can dive deep into summons, equipment, the most efficient way to gather blood slaves, etc.

I took a lot of flak in the Dom 5 forum for pointing out any pretender can benefit from a low amount of blood magic, even if that particular nation doesn't have blood mages.

B1: can cast reinvigoration - requires 1 blood slave. Worth it if you want to script your pretender to cast multiple high-level spells in sequence that would cause lots of fatigue. This spell eliminates all your fatigue in one round.

B2: can cast blood feast - requires 5 blood slaves. Worth it if you have a melee combat pretender who will get wounded. This is easier to access than a recuperation bless for pretenders who lack nature magic.

B3: can craft heart of life, a really strong misc item with +10 reinvigoration, and can craft a blood stone if you also have earth magic and the blood stone is a great earth magic booster. That blood stone could be the key to casting an earth global.

At B4+ you might as well just go deep into blood magic and look at all those summons. But you really need to play a nation with national blood mages to make that work.

But I still argue that B1 to B3 is great for any pretender.

(dives behind desk prepared for the onslaught of "you don't know what you're talking about" posts)

[GrooveCrusader]

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Blood magic is bloody complicated (pun intended) and you can dive deep into summons, equipment, the most efficient way to gather blood slaves, etc.

I took a lot of flak in the Dom 5 forum for pointing out any pretender can benefit from a low amount of blood magic, even if that particular nation doesn't have blood mages.

B1: can cast reinvigoration - requires 1 blood slave. Worth it if you want to script your pretender to cast multiple high-level spells in sequence that would cause lots of fatigue. This spell eliminates all your fatigue in one round.

B2: can cast blood feast - requires 5 blood slaves. Worth it if you have a melee combat pretender who will get wounded. This is easier to access than a recuperation bless for pretenders who lack nature magic.

B3: can craft heart of life, a really strong misc item with +10 reinvigoration, and can craft a blood stone if you also have earth magic and the blood stone is a great earth magic booster. That blood stone could be the key to casting an earth global.

At B4+ you might as well just go deep into blood magic and look at all those summons. But you really need to play a nation with national blood mages to make that work.

But I still argue that B1 to B3 is great for any pretender.

(dives behind desk prepared for the onslaught of "you don't know what you're talking about" posts)

Honestly now that you mention it, a pretender having a tiny bit of blood magic (B2 - B3) skill isn't the worst idea in the world if your wanting to try and break into blood real early, since considering that blood is VERY strong and highly efficient when it comes to summons. Though the only issue I have with breaking into other magic paths (blood as well) is trying to keep up with having the correct summons consistently instead of just 1 or two summons, generally When I get a level 2 mage in any magic path I haven't gotten I usually send said mage out to try and look for gem sites of that magic type to better kick start it haha. Then again I do have alot of bad habits I do need to break out of with this game that I've developed from 5.

Also thanks for the advice!

[GrooveCrusader]

Originally posted by Uncle Al:

The population requirement to have no penalty is now 7500 in Dom 6.

Ah shoot, thanks for the heads up!

[Perro Grande]

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Blood magic is bloody complicated (pun intended) and you can dive deep into summons, equipment, the most efficient way to gather blood slaves, etc.

I took a lot of flak in the Dom 5 forum for pointing out any pretender can benefit from a low amount of blood magic, even if that particular nation doesn't have blood mages.

B1: can cast reinvigoration - requires 1 blood slave. Worth it if you want to script your pretender to cast multiple high-level spells in sequence that would cause lots of fatigue. This spell eliminates all your fatigue in one round.

B2: can cast blood feast - requires 5 blood slaves. Worth it if you have a melee combat pretender who will get wounded. This is easier to access than a recuperation bless for pretenders who lack nature magic.

B3: can craft heart of life, a really strong misc item with +10 reinvigoration, and can craft a blood stone if you also have earth magic and the blood stone is a great earth magic booster. That blood stone could be the key to casting an earth global.

At B4+ you might as well just go deep into blood magic and look at all those summons. But you really need to play a nation with national blood mages to make that work.

But I still argue that B1 to B3 is great for any pretender.

(dives behind desk prepared for the onslaught of "you don't know what you're talking about" posts)

B3 also gives you hellpower, which while you might not really want the horror mark, will let most titan pretenders become unbeatable in their own dominion.

[Prometheus]

The hard truth is no matter how well written or complete we literally cannot explain this as fully and well as LucidTactics did on his youtube channel. The written format available to us lacks the spreadsheets with the easy to see and understand numbers needed to do it properly. His video was with Dom 5 but the mechanic doesn't seem to be significantly changed if at all.